India Trip Days 8-11: I miss my couch

      "Tonight, I'm writing for multiple entry dates because I had no freaking time to write anything. For the last three days, we were out visiting relatives and friends of family. If I wasn't doing that then I was shopping for clothes for the people we were going to visit. My family has this complex of not entering a household without bearing gifts like fruits and clothes. Meeting familiar faces is great but it gets old very fast. My legs hurt from the walking and all I want to do is fall into my couch which I, unfortunately, left back in the States. That couch always succeeded in making me feel better. There is some good news though. Not everything about this trip is boring and tiring.
       I always wanted a motorcycle. When I think of motorcycles, I think classy, powerful, fearless, style, and freedom. Now I can drive one! Well, not exactly a motorcycle but his nerdy sister, the scooter. My older cousin, Binu, took me out around the block and taught me how to drive it. I'm a fast learner and driving a scooter was actually very easy. It didn't take long for him to ride in the passenger seat behind me. We did get into a little trouble though.
       We passed by a cop's house and watching us closely, the officer could tell that I had no license. He walked toward us on his porch and told us to stop fooling around. My cousin ended up sweet talking the policeman into letting us continue. His exact words were, "Look at him....he's innocent. Let's just have him learn. We'll drive somewhere else where we won't bother you. Please." Man, I missed Binu. Guess what? He's going to be handing out with us for the next couple of days, which is exciting. He's funny, witty, and a blatant liar. He doesn't lie about serious things just the little things. He mainly does it to make us laugh and does it in full consciousness that we know he is lying.
       Sadly, two days ago Shwetha had to leave to go back to her hostel. I couldn't even say bye, she left when I was asleep. She did, however, tell her dad that she didn't want to leave because we were all here. Cute huh? But I just got news that she will be returning for the cruise on Saturday. Yes, cruise. Stay tuned. I'm thinking about buying Shwetha something before I leave for good. Nothing too big but it has to be something that she'll be happy with. Maybe a couple of DVDs starring her favorite actors and some chocolates to boot. I have to figure out how to do that with this packed schedule.
       Tomorrow is pretty much our biggest shopping day. We will be shopping for ourselves and for the people at home. I help out with the selection process. I'm here, I can't really go anywhere else so why not? My sister always looks at me before making her final decision on whether or not she wants a particular piece of clothing. If I say no then its no. I must have said "no" a thousand times. The way you buy clothing here is much different than buying clothes off a rack in the US. You go to a particular counter that has the type of clothing you are interested in buying and then the store worker will show them to you. They will then leave that piece of clothing in front of you and go back an select another piece of clothing on the shelf and show that one to you as well. This cycle keeps repeating itself until you find something that you will buy or if you want to leave to look elsewhere. I could tell my parents were getting a little annoyed at the stacks of clothing we refused. What do you want me to do? I like what I like.
        The one thing good about this shopping trip is the nice sized van we will be taking to get there. For the past few days, I have been dealing with unbearable physical pain but I just don't show it. We are doing all our visiting with my uncle Papachen's car. The popular car to have here is the Maruti Suzuki which is a compact car that is small enough to fit in your pocket. So this car to fit all seven of us? You must be joking. There was no other choice but to have my sixteen year old sister sit on my lap for hours on end. I mean, I'm in pretty good shape and have developed a substantial amount of padding over the last two weeks but this is bringing me to my limits. I feel like a dog who was just given a nice delicious T-bone when my uncle puts the car in park.
       During the car ride back home from a relative's house my goal was to keep my Aunt Suja, musically entertained. She loves Hindi music and I had my Ipod filled with them. I believe I did a good job at being a music jockey for her for the night. Early on, I found out that she likes the songs I like so it was easy for me to keep her fingers tapping. I am running out of new songs to play and tomorrow we're headed on a three hour car ride to a shopping complex. Yep yep. This is going to be fun to watch.
       I feel as if I'm cutting out so much from this trip but three days worth of stuff is a lot. Right now, I'm stuffing my face with food and trying to take photos of my Aunt Suja, who hates being in pictures by  herself. Not at the same time, mind you."